November 11 2012 | AA 12 Steps In Action | Step 11 Daily Meditation Alcoholics Anonymous Today's Daily Reflections: "the most basic and urgent life task is to accept, know, love and nurture…" The AA reflection reads as self-acceptance. And understanding that the fellowship principles are based on emotional and spiritual well-being, "knowing and living our feelings in the moment, and coping with reality," need also include, "not coping with our feelings in the moment and needing help." To be able to accept that we cannot cope, sometimes we need help, and help can be found when we ask for it…
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Today is remembrance Sunday in the UK. And we honour the dead and those fallen in battle, in war and in service for the greater good. Remembrance is about acceptance of what happened and of nations unable to cope with the realities and horrors of past events. And on a personal level each person has memories, is touched by the grief caused by conflict. And with regard to the most basic and urgent task, to accept, know, love and nurture oneself and others, reflection, prayer and meditation is all part of learning how to be a very human, human being… And I feel this applies to everyone, and is not dependent on a belief in God, God is always a personal understanding, growing and developing either way day by day…
When we are coping with life, acceptance is a way of life. We accept life on life's terms, and we are able to cope and function. So why is it difficult to find acceptance and powerlessness over certain life events? The ordinary is easy, the extraordinary is difficult. Emotionally and spiritually, feelings can go to extremes and in extreme situations and our ability to cope is challenged to the point where we just don't believe what is going on. And when this happens, we need time to process what seems unacceptable and impossible because we just don't want things to turn out the way they have. Recovery opens the door to admitting and accepting life on life's terms, just for one day and not a whole lifetime…
How am I feeling this morning? I feel calm and not troubled by anything in particular. News programmes full of people making mistakes which is normal. Family appear to be okay and I know this by being in contact. Friends and fellowship, up and down with news of a friend who died over thirty years sober, and we laughed about his outlook in meetings, "a truly grumpy old man," with a wicked sense of humour. He was able to put a smile on anyone's face, already a legend and only just out of his lifetime. And it was my dad's birthday yesterday, he died in 1991, and never found fellowship, my mother and I shared a few words about him yesterday, cherishing the good of him and accepting the bad he lived through no fault of his own. Acceptance and forgiveness are all part of life, very often a challenge made from moment to minute, minutes to hours and hours and then just for a day…
One of my Saturday meetings focuses on the spiritual experience, which can be found in the AA big book, appendix II. Its taken me a long time to find acceptance and a description of spiritual, which helps me. Spiritual: "living in the moment and being able to cope with reality," where all my senses and sensibilities are working so I can cope, appears to fit best. I still hear people awaiting a spiritual experience, which has a higher significance, has a higher impact on them and their outlook. Anyone can connive and create heightened experiences which are at the extremes through physical and emotional strain. These heightened extremes and experiences are out of the ordinary, where surely spiritual resides, simply in the moment of now. Mind you, extreme feelings caused by extreme events will be a shock to anybody's system, and as it happens in the moment, it could be described as an extreme spiritual experience too… After all, everything happens right now, is as real as it can be, as we can see it and understand it or not as the case may be…
Ram Dass, also known as Richard Alpert, described as a spiritual teacher and guru certainly offers solace to me. And thankfully my mother put me onto this decades ago, he would often say, after he had spoken, "of course I could be wrong," and that is the truth in learning, we keep on learning the truth as we go along, we keep on learning how to love as we live longer, and hopefully we learn how to be loved by others on the journey of life today… Truth, love and wisdom, developing growing, sometimes receding and then growing again as life experience illuminates our emotional and spiritual discoveries from moment to moment, imperfectly perfect moments of now…
DonInLondon 2005-2011
Acceptance of life on life’s terms, acceptance I am powerless over people, places and things. Forgiving of everyone, we are the best we can be even when it feels the worst for others. All these things help with self-acceptance, progress not perfect and sober today…
Judge not? We all need see the world as it is and make decisions about what to do next. I can change me, my attitudes and behaviour. I cannot change you. And when I judge not, can forgive me and accept the world is as it may be, I feel included and not on the outside looking in today…
DonInLondon 2005-2010
November 11 2010 ~ 11/11/ a day to remember all conflicts. I remember my Dad and his life experiences, the impact of war and peace. His last few days were sober after decades of being lost. In recovery I have learned to understand what happened, to be able to feel compassion, to love others, to be loved back and useful today...
November 11 2010 ~ reality is our spiritual living. What we do today, our attitudes and behaviour is the sum total of our spiritual endeavours. From the darkest moments to the lightest, our conduct today in recovery is the measure we have of our sobriety. Sometimes we feel right with the world, sometimes not, the choice is ours today...
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AA Daily Reflections ~ "SELF-ACCEPTANCE" We know that God lovingly watches over us. We know that when we turn to Him, all will be well with us, here and hereafter. TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 105
I pray for the willingness to remember that I am a child of God, a divine soul in human form, and that my most basic and urgent life-task is to accept, know, love and nurture myself. As I accept myself, I am accepting God’s will. As I know and love myself, I am
knowing and loving God. As I nurture myself I am acting on God’s guidance. I pray for the willingness to let go of my arrogant self-criticism, and to praise God by humbly accepting and caring for myself." -/-
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November 11 2007
DonInLondon - ‘Day In the Life’ Lost In History Present Today
Remembrance Day Always 11th Day 11th Month 11th Hour
I remember my father always on November 10th, his birth date. A survivor of the second world war, and a survivor many years as a consequence with others affected by the second world war. And before? My Father’s step father, a survivor of the Great War 1914-18, he came home incomplete, and with shell shock. What we call post-traumatic stress disorder. Insane from grief and fear, reliving over and over the horrors and shock. Maimed and bludgeoned for life. I rarely saw my Step Grandfather and only as a child, I cannot recollect him visually, he always smelled old from another time and another era.
So many brave faces making their way. So many urging them to war, no real understanding what it meant to send so many to death, a sentence endured as any who have conscience know, their horror served in a lifetime of grief and regret. A white feather, the sentence complete to make good another’s end. No amount of decades or denial ever put right a profound wrong. Maybe acceptance a fervent willing response to fight the good fight is never to fight again.
So we live to conscience, even when in good conscience we go fight and see others fight for life, long after the battle fought The treaty and armistice and the call to arms a distant echo, nightmares haunt and scream inside.
We need remember
We need, need remember. Cherish those who went with valiant heart, so proud to hold in their heart a sense of God, Country and that call to arms and make freedom for all who live. Were it ever so, and we need remember and hold with good stead the courage of those who fought for our freedom from tyranny.
Do we know? - We do
There is no family on this earth who has not been affected by the call to arms as generations rise up and meet the call of freedom.
We need be sure our freedom safe is not lost to history. Modern war and terror grow as our world becomes small and close in dependence. Old Imperial empires give way to stronger states and global forces. Humanity scrambles in the ruins of civilisations lost to time, as man has fought to protect.
Leadership
All nations see and know the dangers of war, and still we are drawn forever to fight for what?
On a Day of Remembrance
Tears shed for the fallen, no matter which side, no matter what the cause, so many millions lost in human conflict deserve every tear as they fought with valiant heart to meet the cause and meet their doom in battles mankind need heed.
No matter what divides
Lost in war, lost in struggles so often not of their design we need hold stead with the valiant and hold true to life lost. We need remember it is so close as mankind can war again and again.
To Serve and be Loyal
Honour in life and death. We know the loss as we remind and keep safe the truth. That in war the victory may keep freedom for humanity. In death and for the living who have lost their beloved, cherished more in death and loss. Hurt across time makes good our resolve for peace as civilisation rousts those who would take those freedoms away.
The Glorious Dead
I have often been overwhelmed and cut deep by that short epithet “The Glorious Dead” who served in honour and held true to values which are held deep inside. We can grieve the glorious dead, who served for us as we, who live to freedoms hard fought and vouchsafed need always remember their sacrifice.
The Day of Remembrance
With honour they served the cause, freedom. And as we know and recollect we can remind ourselves and our heads of state what it is to make war and more war.
Mankind
Every generation builds on the shoulders of their forebears. We learn and as we write history we write as we are the truth. Not always so. As in all faith and courage makes revise our version and reasons for calamitous wreckage that war becomes. The good of it? We learn our peril and with some slow progress humankind stumbles closer and then somehow can lose its way another generation.
We need remember the glorious dead, each and every one from every side of any conflict, an unbearable loss and tragedy.
God is truth. The final judgment of those who broker and make war, judged by history and by their God. We need honour those who served with faith and courage and followed in good faith.
Human kind learn again and again. It may always be so, it is our nature and nurture which holds us to our history, our freedom and our valiant who fight to keep freedom safe. We need honour the glorious dead, always and forever.
11th November 2006
Ego Driven Madness
I used to be ego driven? My oh my, well maybe just a bit? I have wondered about this over the last few days with a friend so completely wrapped up in themselves they cannot see outside their own minute world.
I wonder sometimes if its worth bothering to try help, yet I do and helping means we tolerate everything someone has, all their defects and all their bullshit.
The problem is often we need to look in the mirror as we see the madness of others, for indeed we know we are capable of the same madness if we were in their space… Well we might think so and feel so.
Ego Though - Plays Tricks
Ego convinces those who have a lot of it, that they are the centre of the world. If they had been born a long time ago, they may have been a priest or someone who could pout, puff themselves up, and say look at me!
Look at Me!
A song by an ex spice girl. And something in the Ego wants us to be looked at and admired and helped and coddled. Look at me, or worse we feel the whole world is staring at us, in some sort of admiration. And if we are lucky some are, for all those reasons we need to be looked at. We need to know we have some machismo some element which makes us attractive to our chosen sexual preference, we need to know we are desirable, and ego calls and flatters the paranoid mind and tortures it with calamity, they look at me because I am a fuck up and not as attractive as my ego suggests.
Help me in My Pain
Ego driven the pain is worse and we express our needs and wants. We still feel we control the one thing we feel we can, our Ego. Ego driven and so tortured by pride and lust and torrid notions of control, we believe we are the centre of the universe and still invincible, when all around us is chaos and hate and self-loathing as Ego’s drift to madness makes good our desire for oblivion.
Oblivion
We relish its touch as we make our ego and pride King. We fancy as are the centre of the known universe (inside our delusion) and we are attractive and wanted. Maybe we are, but by what sort of fucked people? Why of course those who are like us.
We look for solace in what we see in our mirror
Solace sought is found in others broken and malleable. People who are broken and can be manipulated. Made to feel we are important, we have something to offer. We control and bend them to our will, and then like any other toy we discard them as they fail to meet our needs.
Despise
We despise them and we despise ourselves as all manner of fixing ourselves does not work. We despise our weakness and prey on the weakness of others. We are enslaved by our impoverished outlook and feel the thwack of truth just round the corner, as we find nothing works but oblivion.
Oblivion to rock bottom
Not so far away now, as admission does not lead to ego’s needs. We are seen as weak an manipulative people, and left to our own devices we die from heartache and hate, hate for a world that just does not work. These days so near its palpable and easy to see the end is coming, where we either get straight or fuck everything up we have tried to do.
Bankrupt, emotional, physical and spiritual - rock bottom beckons the ego’s drift to denial, lies and chaos. Desolation may be our last point before we are taken or saved by a willingness to change nothing in this world at all, just ourselves…
November 11th 2005
Say Goodbye
The most powerful anchor on our potential to soar high in life is the past. The past contains the dead weight of experience, learned beliefs and all our mistakes. Life cannot truly begin until we are able to say goodbye to the legacies of yesterday at will. Like a filing cabinet, the past is a resource of information for learning, but it is not a place to live. When we go to work do we spend our day in the filing cabinet? How often will we, do we live in the past today? Say goodbye and make it final.
Saying farewell to yesterday, last month and last year is the sign we want to live for today and be truly alive to all the possibilities of 'the moment', while fully aware that all we think, say and do right now, creates tomorrow.
November 11th 2004
Singularity and Risk
As we get older, we become less open to life's risks. At least I thought so. Now, less sure and still a single being spinning along in the universe, I realise the singularity we all have. So often we avoid and revamp our inclinations to take account of others feeling, we lose our self, our identity along the way. Or we develop an identity which encompasses our love and sharing with family and friends. Our identity is well known in the context of our fellows, our identity fits with common purpose. Inside though dwells our real identity, so close to touch and so far it feels like a dream lost in time.
For the UK, its a day of remembrance, for those who fought in wars since the end of World War I. Its a sad day across the world and many conflicts are very active. Arafat died this day. So many hopes and aspirations are ground into dust as new thinkers, new warlike and war making factions take up arms to fight for their freedom. Dashing the notions of years gone by, that the world would end persecution and become safer for all citizens.
Sad news indeed, and remembrance too of those who fought on behalf of powerful governments, weak with mistaken leadership squandering life for the sake of their righteousness. Thank God for time.
Our singularity, if we were a phenomenon, which is held to be the final state of matter falling into a black hole might be the sum of our being in this world, as we teeter off into the light or dark. We arrive and thrive in the company we encounter, we leave without that host, a vessel of memories forgotten till the transition may permit. As we leave abruptly, we hear that our lives flash before our eyes. It is a most comforting notion that we take with us every nuance of living, compressed in a flash of time, and nothing forgotten. For if it were greater than the spectacle of life caught in a split second, what room would we have for an afterlife, an eternity. Comforting to know that these building blocks of memory so captured in the mind’s eye form part of an infinite journey to understanding on a cosmic scale.
If we open our mind to the risk, to the new moment, to comfort from familiarity, to wonder at this spectacular day, we transcend the age of reason and join in with the irritable power of destiny.
Just For Today And Every Day, Cherish Always...
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AA Official Online Site: Daily Reflections
AA Official Online Site: Big Book And Twelve And Twelve
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“The method of prayer & meditation. We often hear it said in meetings that the speaker "hits his knees every morning." Not being brought up Catholic or Muslim, we envisioned that slapping of the knees might be spiritually significant in A.A. When we discovered that the act of prayer was being referred to, we asked why A.A. tells us to get on our knees to pray. We were informed that A.A. makes no such suggestion. In fact, reference to praying on the knees, in the original draft of Step 7, was explicitly removed to prevent the misconception that such a practice was suggested. Moreover, to be on one’s knees as a prior condition to prayer will prevent prayer at many opportunities during the day. If you or your sponsor think that you should be on your knees for correct prayer, then by all means do so. It might just be the best way to pray. For the content of prayer, see Step 11b that follows.” BB Bunch
November 2012 | AA 12 Steps In Action | Step 10 The Now Inventory
Alcoholics Anonymous | Step Eleven Reading Video Link:
November 2012 | Video Reading How It Works:
November 2012 | Video Reading Into Action :
November 2012 | Playlist All About Step Eleven:
I do not speak for Alcoholics Anonymous I speak for myself. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of unique and authentic people who speak for themselves where they will to share experience, strength and hope about recovery on a daily basis. Anonymity affords sanctuary to find how to live sober and be open, honest and willing to learn life day by day. For me "truth," "love" and "wisdom" offer the best spiritual experience by living reality today. Into the fabric of recovery from alcoholism are woven the Twelve Steps and the Traditions: steps to be open, honest and willing to learn, traditions to live unity, service and recovery.
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Spiritual principles ~ Forgiveness Acceptance Surrender Faith Open-mindedness Honesty Willingness Moral-inventory Amends Humility Persistence Spiritual-growth Service
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